So if I were to tell anyone that I got my first “job” at the age of 27, I’d come across as quite the loser in life, who whiled away the prime of her youth procrastinating instead of getting a real job.  But that’s not quite the story!

I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life as a professional actor/compere/voiceover artist and singer back home in India and what a time it was. It was the “dream job”.  I worked an average of 6 months a year, travelled or lolled around for the rest, had people rally around me through the day checking my face, hair or tending to my voice and all this while I got paid heaps of money that sometimes didn’t even seem justified for doing what I absolutely loved! Compared to my friends who hated what they did, worked 9am to 6pm, and got just 2 weeks annual leave, I was living a dream.

In January 2011 I got married and moved to Hong Kong, not knowing what I was going to do. Acting wasn’t an option because there was little work that would come my way as an Indian face.  And so I finally decided to pursue my long standing dream of wanting to be a hairdresser — a profession that had my attention since I was a little girl. I remember telling my 85 year old, super successful South Indian grandfather, while still in school that I would like to be a hairdresser one day. His response was “What! You want to be a barber!” condescendingly.  Professional hairdressing in the early 90’s in India was almost nonexistent, barring a select few people who had trained themselves professionally.  Most men got their hair cut from the local guy who sat in his makeshift salon or tiny shop on the street, with nothing but a stool, scissors, a shaving blade and a mirror. Some of them gave the best oil massages know as “champi” that you couldn’t get anywhere else in the world even if you paid hundreds of dollars.  While women went to ‘beauty parlours’ run by other women who barely knew how to apply cream on someone’s face let alone carry out beauty procedures!  So I could understand where my grandfather was coming from. Sad that he didn’t live long enough to see the thriving, fast growing profession that it has become today in India.

So here I was in Hong Kong – a city where everyone seemed to have perfect hair and I said to myself, let’s finally do this! It was sheer luck that I chanced upon an ad in a magazine one evening and landed my first job at PAUL GERRARD!  Where I’d have fixed timings, annual leave, fixed lunch breaks….. Everything that I had always dreaded!!! So you could imagine my initial apprehension.

However it didn’t take me long to figure out that luck couldn’t have favoured me more than it had yet again! What a first job to have! And what a salon it is!  I spend my days learning about what I’ve always loved, seeing the happiest faces walk away with a new found confident swagger after they’re done with their appointments and it’s pure joy! I watch the best hands in the business work their magic on heads that transform into perfection. We have 10 hairdressers here from all over the world, each having very unique styles and schools of technique, so for a novice like me what more could I ask for? Paul is probably the only person in Hong Kong whose salon has a professional training program for his juniors.  Which means that I don’t have to spend the next 5 years of mine walking aimlessly around the salon trying to pick up whatever I can by observing. Instead I have the nicest, most helpful genius hairdressers who so patiently answer every silly query that I have about cuts or colour and I’m so grateful to them.

Loving my work has always been important to me, because it forms such a large part of my life, and I’m so blessed to have found ‘true love’ twice over!  This time thanks to Paul Gerrard! Sometimes starting out late(ish) in life ain’t such a bad thing after all ;-D

Anaitha

Hairdressing assistant